


with your hand - I will stand guard

by heylifeitsemily



Series: do android detectives dream of electric sheep? [2]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Comfort, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 08:07:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20597480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heylifeitsemily/pseuds/heylifeitsemily
Summary: It would be a simple piece of small talk in any other time, any other place, and Nick means well. A shiver wracks her spine in spite of the flames licking at her feet."Nate and I were,” she sighs, digging her nails into the heel of her palm. “We were great roommates."





	with your hand - I will stand guard

It would be a simple piece of small talk in any other time, any other place, and Nick means well. A shiver wracks her spine in spite of the flames licking at her feet.

Nick opens his mouth to speak, but Velma beats him to the punch.

“It’s okay. Nate and I were,” she sighs, digging her nails into the heel of her palm. “We were great roommates. We worked well together, balanced the chores, shared the bills.” She studies the embers coming off the fire, watching them shoot into the air before beginning the meandering trail back to earth. “It wasn’t just letting bygones be bygones – we liked each other well enough. Didn’t get into fights very often. And I think we called it love because that’s what people did.”

There’s a muzzle flash somewhere in the distance, too far away for the sound to reverberate in the air. She picks up a stick by her feet, poking at the kindling.

“And now?”

“To be honest, I’m not so sure anymore.” A fresh wave of sparks bursts forth, and the same slow descent begins again. “I’m starting to realize there’s a difference between making someone happy and not making them miserable.”

Nick’s mouth twists into something that echoes a grimace, and that’s a little more than her blossoming migraine knows how to deal with at the moment. She crawls away from the fire into her sleeping bag.

Above them, miles into the stratosphere, sits a twist of black and green fog illuminated by more stars than should be legal. She can’t recall the likeness of the Boston sky before the bombs in clarity, but whatever it might have been pales in comparison to this.

Nate’s body had this awful blue tinge to it when she buried him. She can still feel the weight of him in a fireman carry over her shoulder, and his warmth curled around her back in the hospital bed the night Shaun was born.

Her eyes sting. “I still miss him.”

She’s huffing out a shaky breath when her eyes snap open, Nick crouched over her and brushing a tear off her cheek with his thumb. Brown meets neon yellow, and where she would expect to feel warmth radiating from his touch, she’s met with static, like running her hand in front of a TV screen.

“Less light pollution,” she offers with a wave of her hand. “You never used to see a sky like this.”

Nick spares a glance upwards. The night the brotherhood arrived in their airship, he’d looked into the darkness and quoted Poe as if nothing else could so convey the portents of doom. What verse does he hear now, the moonlight slipping in between his exposed wiring?

“It’s alright,” he says.

“What is? The fact that I,” she stutters, chokes out a laugh. Her stomach drops as the words form, as she lets out a breath she’s been holding since shoveling the last heap of dirt into Nate’s makeshift grave. “That I didn’t love my husband?”

He cups her cheek, thumb sliding up and down cheekbone. Nick is truly a feat of modern engineering, the way he can incline his head just so and make her chest feel fit to burst.

“You’re allowed to mourn him anyhow.”

She gulps, and his touch is too gentle, burning a brand onto her skin. Her hand trembles as it comes up to cover his. “Can I tell you something?”

“Anytime.”

She sits up, pulling his hand from her face to cradle it in her lap. He lets her turn it over and study the synthetic skin, the chords of metal fiber beneath not unlike tendons, the glow of wires not so distant from veins. 

“Some nights I think it should be him out here, you know? He’d know how to survive on the bare minimum, ration ammo – he’d be able to solve this world’s problems better than I ever could.” Her laugh comes out clipped, hollow. “If I had just been able to calm Shaun down, he’d be the one trekking across the wasteland, telling you about his lacklustre marriage.”

Nick puts his hand over hers to stop the fidgeting. Meeting his gaze is too daunting a task, so she watches the fire flicker and sputter out into ashes, and then she traces them out onto the desert expanse as they float in the wind towards whatever comes next.

“It was a coin toss,” he says. “Matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

She flinches at the accusation in his tone, the frustration she’s heard time and time again, but never before thrown her way. It hangs in the air between them until he squeezes her hand and stands up, making to stamp out the last few embers.

Velma’s sleeping bag feels lacking as she snuggles back into it. The stars are watching her, and she stares up into them until they blur together. She’s become adept at crying silently these last few months, but not nearly so good as she is at screaming without sound.

Nick does her the courtesy of keeping his eyes fixed on the horizon line.

The night is still pitch black when her breathing evens out again. Nick’s moved so that he’s sitting in her periphery, close enough that, if she were so inclined, she need only tug at his coat to get his attention.

Need only reach out to twine their fingers together.

She’s still pondering that chasm when his voice cuts into the night, warm and world-weary and certain.

“It’s not worth much, but,” he trails off, tipping up the brim of his hat to get a better look at the stars. “I’m glad it was you.”

She falls asleep with her hand next to his, an inch and an ocean of newfound constellations apart.

**Author's Note:**

> If I bomb my MCAT because I was too busy putting in some loving-Nick-Valentine hours I'm going to blame Todd Howard personally
> 
> Title taken from Edgar Lee Master's "I Will Stand Guard" - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=32&issue=3&page=4


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